Best offer on record: MIT-licensed BookStack software is free to self-host (no trial, no expiry). 7 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Live check of “MIT-licensed BookStack software is free to self-host (no trial, no expiry)”:Confirmed
BookStack is confirmed as "fully free and open, MIT licensed", with the official site stating "There is no cost to downloading and installing your own instance of BookStack." The source is provided under the MIT License (Copyright (c) 2015-2026, Dan Brown and the BookStack project contributors), and the project FAQ/blog confirm there are no paid editions, no dual licensing, no open-core tier and no trial or expiry — self-hosting is free for anyone, with only optional donations/support plans and your own hosting costs.
MIT-licensed BookStack software is free to self-host (no trial, no expiry) high confidence
Source is MIT licensed and free. Homepage: 'There is no cost to downloading and installing your own instance of BookStack.' FAQ: 'No, we don't provide custom, or enterprise versions of BookStack.' and 'We do not, and we don't intend to' (official managed hosting). 2025 blog: no paid features, no dual licensing, no open core, no in-app up-sells. Requirements per install docs: PHP 8.2 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer, Composer 2.2 or newer, Git, and a PHP-capable web server.
Eligibility
Anyone. No .edu email, student status, startup age or funding cap, team size or region limit. No card and no sign-up form (per the open-source documentation page).
How to claim
Get the source from the Codeberg repository linked on bookstackapp.com (GitHub is a mirror), or follow https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/installation/ and pick a manual release-branch install, a community Docker image (LinuxServer.io or solidnerd), or the Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04 script. Supply your own server, MySQL or MariaDB database and SMTP mail details.
Expiry
None. The MIT licence has no term or renewal.
Gotchas
Your server, backups, SMTP and upgrades are the real cost; the homepage's '£2.50 IONOS VPS' is an example, not a fee. 'BookStack does not currently support shared PHP hosting.' The Ubuntu 26.04 script is for a fresh OS only and could overwrite an existing web setup. You apply security releases yourself; 2026 releases include v26.05.1 to v26.05.5 and v26.09.2 (21 Oct 2026). Not a student or startup programme: the licence is the whole offer.
BookStack community support is free with no response guarantee high confidence
Free channels: community discussions, Codeberg issues and Reddit, plus free documentation and YouTube guidance. Support page: 'No assurance of response, support or resolution.' Paid plans are separate and carry no discount: Professional £450/year (email or help-desk support, install and update help, priority triage) and Enterprise £4,500/year (includes Professional, up to 10 video-support hours a year), both provided by HTTP Functions Ltd. The support page lists no education, student, startup, nonprofit or trial terms.
Eligibility
Anyone. No account, card, .edu email, startup or region condition is stated for community channels.
How to claim
Search the docs at https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs, then post in the community discussions or on Reddit, or open a bug or request on Codeberg (https://codeberg.org/bookstack/bookstack/issues). Do not email for general help: the contact page lists only security reports and donation or sponsorship questions not answered on the donate page as email topics.
Expiry
None; nothing to renew.
Gotchas
No response, support or fix is promised. Discord was deprecated in 2026 and a new Zulip-based community site was set up (14 Jul 2026 post), so older guides that point to Discord are stale. The only route with a response commitment is the paid Professional plan, and it is not free. Current support pricing says VAT is 'not included in current pricing although may be chargeable in future'.
BookStack public demo instance (free trial of the software, not hosting) high confidence
Official 'test drive' at demo.bookstackapp.com, linked from the homepage, using the demo admin login published there. The demo database and image storage reset automatically every 30 minutes. Restricted in the demo: user deletion, user updates and setting updates.
Eligibility
Anyone who opens the demo. No sign-up, card, .edu, startup or region condition is stated.
How to claim
Open the 'Open demo site' link on https://www.bookstackapp.com/ and sign in with the demo admin login shown there.
Expiry
Data resets every 30 minutes; no trial length applies.
Gotchas
A sandbox only. Anything entered can be wiped within 30 minutes. It is not a hosting trial and does not give you an instance you keep.
Third-party Stellar Hosted: 14-day free trial, no card needed to start high confidence
Not a BookStack project offer. Vendor page: 'We offer a 14 day free trial and 100% money back guarantee.' FAQ: 'You can sign up and use BookStack for 14 days without entering your payment details.' Standard and Premium show 'Start free trial'. List prices (EUR, monthly, ex VAT): Standard €49, Premium €99, Custom from €199; add-ons €25 to €499. Annual billing: 'Get 2 months for free, 17% discount on a yearly plan!' (17% applies when paid upfront). Hosted in Amsterdam (EU).
Eligibility
No conditions listed: no .edu, student, startup, company-size or region rule for the trial. No card is needed to start.
How to claim
On https://www.stellarhosted.com/bookstack/, click 'Start free trial' on Standard or Premium, sign up without payment details, and use the 14-day instance.
Expiry
14 days. At the end you must pick a plan and enter payment details to keep the instance and data. The page does not say what happens if you do not subscribe.
Gotchas
Stellar Hosted is a bronze sponsor on bookstackapp.com, but the homepage says listed services are 'not tested, vetted nor supported by the official BookStack project in any manner', so this is not a BookStack-endorsed offer. The money-back guarantee has no stated conditions or time window. Add-ons and enterprise terms cost extra.
Third-party Elestio: $20 free trial credit with 3-day validity medium confidence
Not a BookStack project offer. Elestio pricing page: 'Our free trial gives you $20 in credits to use with a 3-day validity,' usable for BookStack or any other app in its catalogue. Credits bill hourly against the chosen VM. The first support level is free with each instance. The currency is not named (shown only as '$').
Eligibility
Not stated: the page gives no new-account, region, student, startup or card requirement for the trial.
How to claim
Create an Elestio account and deploy BookStack from its catalogue, drawing on the trial credit. The page does not describe the sign-up steps.
Expiry
3-day validity (start point not stated). The same page also says 'The credits never expire', which conflicts.
Gotchas
Contradictory terms on the page. If auto-recharge is disabled and credits run out, the BookStack instance and other resources are stopped; Elestio says it emails before that. Confirm the trial terms with Elestio before relying on them.
Third-party fresh.dev: £8 credit for new accounts (BookStack from £5/mo) medium confidence
Not a BookStack project offer; the page says fresh.dev is not affiliated with the BookStack project. New accounts get £8 of credit and 'nothing is charged up front'. BookStack app from £5/month, billed by the second (App Small: 1 vCPU, 1 GiB memory, 15 GiB storage). HTTPS on a free your-name.apps.fresh.dev address; own domains supported. The page shows BookStack 26.09.1.
Eligibility
New accounts (per the credit wording). No student, .edu, startup or region condition is stated. A saved card is needed to launch (see gotchas).
How to claim
Create a fresh.dev account, open Apps, Launch, choose BookStack, name it and pick a size. Save a card with Stripe when prompted; the £8 credit applies to the new account.
Expiry
Not stated for the £8 credit.
Gotchas
A card must be saved with Stripe to launch, although nothing is charged up front. Search snapshot says '£5/mo, billed by the second. Excludes VAT' while today's fetch says 'Includes VAT'; check before quoting. No automatic backups yet ('keep your own copy with BookStack's export or backup tools'); deleting an app deletes its data. Outbound port 25 is blocked (use SMTP on port 587). The page shows 26.09.1, one patch behind the 21 Oct 2026 security release v26.09.2.
Third-party AWS Marketplace listing (DevSecOps, Inc.): 14-day free trial, then usage billing medium confidence
Not a BookStack project offer; sold by DevSecOps, Inc. Listing: 'Try this product free for 14 days according to the free trial terms set by the vendor.' After the trial, usage billing applies: $0.01/hour listed for each of seven instance types, plus 'Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply' (the listing describes EFS and RDS). Listing version: v1.0 (BookStack v24.05.4).
Eligibility
Vendor trial terms. The listing states no .edu, student, startup, region or card conditions.
How to claim
Use 'Try for free' on the AWS Marketplace listing (an AWS account is needed), then deploy the CloudFormation template into your own AWS account ('Deployed on AWS').
Expiry
14 days. The trial converts to a paid subscription when it ends unless cancelled before that. 'We do not currently support refunds, but you can try it for free and cancel at any time.'
Gotchas
The vendor EULA (wiki.devsecopsinc.io) says 'Redistribution, modification, or reverse engineering is strictly prohibited' and grants only a licence to the software; this conflicts with BookStack's MIT licence for the same code. The listing's version (v24.05.4) is well behind the 26.x line. The listing does not say whether AWS infrastructure is free during the trial.
No BookStack-issued student, education, startup, nonprofit or trial-credit programme exists in the sources checked: homepage (with demo section), support page, project FAQ, donate page, contact page, and the 2024-2026 blog posts. Nothing was sunset in 2025-2026 because none existed in those sources. None of the seven findings has a student, education, startup or nonprofit condition, a .edu requirement, a startup age or funding cap, or a region limit. Findings 4-7 are third-party vendor offers, not BookStack's, and can change without notice.Changes in 2025-2026: the 2 Jan 2026 review says paid offerings saw 'little outward promotion or change/development'. The 14 Jul 2026 review reports average support revenue up 47%, the move from GitHub to Codeberg, a new Zulip-based community site, and Discord deprecated. Support prices (£450/yr, £4,500/yr) match the 12 Jul 2024 post, so no price change is visible. The support page now says VAT 'is not included in current pricing although may be chargeable in future' (a caveat, not yet a change). 2026 security releases include v26.05.1 to v26.05.5 and v26.09.2 (21 Oct 2026).Excluded as not verified or not BookStack-specific: Hostinger VPS page (generic 'free domain for 1 year' and limited-time deals); Node.uk managed hosting (from £25/mo, no trial found); other sponsor-linked hosts (Cloudabove, NETWAYS, BookHost, Practicali and others), not checked for offers and not vetted by the project; aggregator pages (costbench.com discounts page, inferse.com, apis.io, startupik.com), whose education, startup and nonprofit sections are generic templates (costbench says 'We don't have BookStack-specific education terms verified yet'), so they were not used as sources.Gaps: the HTTP Functions Ltd paid-support terms PDF (https://www.httpfunctions.com/docs/bookstack-support-terms.pdf) could not be read. WebFetch returned compressed bytes, and the Read tool needs poppler, which is not installed. Paid-support contract terms, renewal, and any trial or discount in them are therefore unverified. The AWS listing and the 2025-2026 blog posts were read from search excerpts, not full fetches, and the blog index fetch failed.